Lync based Contact Center

Last week, as part of the DFW Unified Communications User Group series on “Lync as a PBX”, I presented an update on where we stand with Microsoft Lync 2010 in the Contact Center.  I thought I would summarise that presentation in a post.

Lync has some “hunt group” capability called Response Groups built in that has some similar small scale contact center capability, however, at this point there is no official contact center from Microsoft for Lync.  While some see this as a weekness, Microsoft has committed it’s resources to improving the overall platform and left the call / contact certer functionality as a 3rd party partner add on.  This isn’t unusual, some legacy TDM PBXs vendors merely OEMed other 3rd party contact centers to provide a “all in one” solution – (this is the case in many segments of the PBX world, including phones and headsets, many vendors don’t supply everything but partner with other vendors to OEM products).  For Lync, Microsoft has made it clear believes in the ecosystem model and doesn’t desire to put the Microsoft label on products that are not part of the core offering.

However, this ins’t entirely true – if you have the dedication to make a completly custom solution, or want to jump into the Lync Contact Center segment with a brand new product, Microsoft has provided a functional contact center as example code free with the Lync 2010 SDK.  (Unless I’m mistaken, I know of no other vendor that does this).

Broadly, one can break down Lync Contact Centers into 3 catagories –

1.  Native Lync based on the UCMA development platform – the advantage here is that the calls never leave Lync, so troubleshooting and architecture is simplified.  Examples include Clarity Connect and prairieFyre .

2. SIP trunked with UCMA Integration for Presence integration and Automation – Calls are passed to another SIP based PBX.  It’s essentually like being Federated to a 3rd party solution, although some use Lync Voice to present the call to the Agent or for when the Agent makes a call that is not tied to the contact center. The advantage here is that mature products that have been in the Contact Center space for a long time can be leveraged with Lync.  Examples include Aspect Unified IP, Altigen, Zeacom, and in a couple of months Genesys .

3. “Work with Anyone” solutions that have no integration with Lync at all that are merely trunked to Lync – It’s own island, only useful if you want to isolate the contact center from Business Users alltogether.

I’ve found a couple of links that have lists of Contact Centers with Lync.

This list is from a blogger on TechNet:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/cs2010/archive/2012/02/24/attendant-and-contact-center-applications-for-lync-ocs.aspx

This site has applications in numerious catagories, including Contact Center:

http://www.ucoffice.com/Pages/default.aspx

Each has product has it’s advantages and disadvantages, is targeted to certain size contact center, and has varing capabilities – and cost - per agent.  As usual, you need to evaluate your business needs to make a decision.

Thanks,

Tom

Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbauer at Enterprise Connect 2012

First, it was a great honor to be on the “Living with Lync” panel at Enterprise Connect 2012.  The session was packed, and it really could have kept going for much longer.  My thanks to Kevin Kieller for leading the session and all the folks at Enterprise Connect.  I hope to be able to do it again sometime.

This year Lync was most certainly a hot topic.  The Microsoft Keynote by Kirk Koenigsbauer

had pretty cool demos, including giant touchsceen monitor with Windows 8 and Lync, and featured a few important annoucements / statements:

1. While no date was given, it was confirmed that the Lync and Skype teams were working hard on Federation as the first step in integration.  Kirk announced that there would be a full roadmap soon. 

2. It was annouced that Lync Online (Office 365) was adding Enterprise Voice via Jajah (this is coming at the end of July).

3. While Wave 15 wasn’t demoed, Kirk mentioned that it had made it to Beta milestone for Technical Preview customers.

Lync was very much the buzz of the show, with just about every session I attended mentioning it, and it dominated the last “Locknote” session, when the topic of SIP trunking replacing the PSTN came up a customer mentioning voice calls via Federation was quickly replacing PSTN calling.  The panel noted that perhaps a direcory of federated companies was needed, I wanted to tell them about this .

At Kevin Kieller’s session on Skype, Kevin did the math on the numbers of users people could contact for free using Lync Federation once Skype was added to the current mix - a staggering 1.4 billion.

There were two things in common with most vendors on the show floor – they were giving away an iPad, and thier product was (or was about to be) integrated to Lync.

It was great to see so many old friends and meet people in person that I have intereacted with online.  I hope to be able to attend again next year.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, I’m bringing my Commodore 64 , my Lync Christmas Tree , and my Lync Cube Presence Indicator plus I’ll have lot more cool demos.

I thought I’d post my presentation in advance, you can download it here .

See you there!

I’m working on a second video on how to program it for Lync and setup the SBA, and when it’s complete I will update this post.  (You can subscribe to this post to be notified when it’s updated).

A few days ago Tom Arbuthnot posted a blog with pictures of the hardware (that provide a better look than my video), if your interested in the UX1000 you should definitely check it out.

I had one other picture I wanted to share – a Size comparison between the UX2000 and the UX1000:

The UX1000 is sitting on top of the UX2000.  They are both 1U high units, but the UX1000 is half the length, perfect for remote site telecom closets and racks that are not full length “datacenter” type racks that mount with just a couple of ears on the side.

Thanks,

Tom

As of today, all of the official Microsoft Lync Mobile clients are now available.  Now what?  Well, unfortunately unless you are running Lync on Office 365 you can not just load them and login.  First, you need to install the latest update for Lync Server, Cumulative Update 4 (CU4), which you can download here.

Second, you need to install and configure the mobility and autodiscover service, which will also entail getting a new SAN for your Lync public certificate and external DNS changes for outside access.  Jeff Schertz has a very comprehensive and easy to follow installation guide here.

After that is complete, you are ready to get the clients:

Windows Phone 7: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/9ce93e51-5b35-e011-854c-00237de2db9e

Android : https://market.android.com/details?id=com.microsoft.office.lync

iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/dk/app/microsoft-lync-2010-for-iphone/id484293461?mt=8

iPad: http://itunes.apple.com/dk/app/microsoft-lync-2010-for-ipad/id484222449?mt=8

At the next Dallas / Fort Worth Unified Communications User Group meeting in January, we will discuss the mobility service installation and have all versions of the new mobile client available to play with.  I hope to see you there.  

Thanks, Tom

However, just moving the file to the “Lync Recordings” folder on your PC doesn’t cause it to automatically show up in Lync Recording Manager, and there is no intuitive way to “import” it into your recordings.

Fortunately, there is a way to get it to show up.  For this to work:

1. Lync Recording Manager *must* be closed
2. You must copy the recording folder to your “Lync Recordings” folder (if doesn’t work if the folder is in any other location)

Now do the following:

1. Browse in Explorer to your recording the Lync Recordings folder ( in Windows 7 “x:\Users\userID\Lync Recordings\RecordingName”, in Windows XP “x:\Documents and Setttings\userID\Lync Recordings\RecordingName” )
2. Doubleclick “RecordingData.frd”
3. Windows won’t have an application associated with .frd extension and won’t know how to open it.  Pick  “Select the program from a list” ,  and then browse for “x:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync\ocpubmgr.exe”
4. Lync Recording Manager will open.  Click on the “Lync Recordings” Tab and your recording will now be in the list.
   

You can now publish the recording (and change the options for publishing).

Thanks,

Tom

Aside from the ones that I knew about, there is also callto: and conf:

What I also figured out from URLProtocolView is that when these are invoked in a HREF tag in a web browser, the web browser launches communicator.exe with a command line argument of what is contained in the tag.  Searching for the communicator.exe command line arguments got me this for Lync 2010 on TechNet  :

Lync 2010 Command-Line Parameters

im:<sip:user1@host><sip:user2@host>

The following table provides examples of these command-line parameters.

Command-Line Parameter Examples

Hey, that looks the same as our list of protocols available, and they give examples to boot!

 For example the behavior of callto: in this example:

<a href=”callto:sip:ootycorp@microsoft.com”>Click Here to Call</a>

Results in the contact to be pulled up like this:

 but the call isn’t made, you still need to click to call or open the IM panel, which is not exactly what we were looking for but still useful.

So, given the information we have here it doesn’t look possible to do an automatic video call using this method, put putting in a SIP URI and then another click to pick the modality is possible.

Thanks,

Tom

Chris Norman has posted what should be regarded as the definitive blog post and discussion on Avaya ACE.  I’ve talked about this and CuciLync in user group discussions and I always advise against it.

I wanted to highlight a  couple of comments I made in the thread.  Joe Schurman from Avaya contends multiple times that companies cannot throw away their investments in their Avaya infrastructure and, not should, but *have to* use ACE, to which I respond:

“Let’s go back a few years to the 80s. Let’s trade “UC” for “PC”.

I have a large amount of expensive typewriters. Best of breed. I’m putting in new computers, but my typewriter company tells me instead of wasting money on buying keyboards, I should buy a special cable to connect my typewriter to my computer to protect my investment in Typewriters. But, the typewriter doesn’t have all the keys that a computer keyboard does, so I lose the ability to do everything I could with the computer.

This is the logic here.

Instead of putting the computer and typewriter side by side for those pesky triplicate forms and labels and stuff that there were no solutions or replacement for yet (and trim down the number of typewriters to only people who needed them for those tasks) – you go with the “better together” approach?

P.S. My typewriter company is working as hard as it can to get into the PC business. “

and

“First, I didn’t mean to make my analogy seem hardware centric. Only that the computer (Lync) can do many many things and well (IM/Presence/Voice/Video/Conferencing/Collaboration/Etc.) and the Typewriter (Avaya) could do one (Voice).

Even though you have dismissed it several times, one strategy of co-existence is SIP trunking, like putting the computer next to the typewriter. When you eliminate the need for the typewriter, you take it away. ROI in part comes from all of the additional features the computer gave you that you didn’t have before or paid for in other higher ways (plus not having to pay annual maintenance and upgrades on the typewriter when it’s gone).”

While Joe makes a very passionate plea to try to fully leverage your Avaya investment, what he completely disregards is fully leveraging your investment in Lync, which ACE kills as noted by Chris Norman:

“Greyed out icons adding to end user confusion

Escalation to a voice call requires the use of add on to the bottom of the window.

No escalation path to video or desktop sharing from the conversation window since Avaya recommended configuration is to only license STD Cal and they have been removed through policy settings.

You can only accept or decline an inbound call there is no way to redirect to another phone or voicemail

You cannot use Lync audio conferencing using ACE with Lync AVMUC. This experience is totally broken.

No conference controls when in an Avaya Audio conference from Lync with ACE

No contact card integration or broader Office integration for click to call, your limited to the ACE plugin for Outlook and what it offers.

No way to launch directly into a video or sharing session from right clicking the client.

No visual voicemail and no seamless integration into Exchange UM or even Avaya MM platform

No remote access capability

Scheduled conferencing, I saw no click to conference capability only very basic and rudimentary telephony capabilities so I do not understand where you think this advanced voice features are in the ACE integration to Lync.”

There is a point in an asset’s life where it has completely depreciated in value.  Then you look around, you find a replacement for that asset that provides 10x more functionality, is less expensive, and has a lower on-going costs.  If you instead decide to put more money into the depreciated asset, there is a technical name for that, it’s called “throwing good money after bad”.

Avaya Voice is not more magical than Lync Voice.  If there is some telephony feature as a business need, then keep those phones until there is a Lync solution.  However, Lync gives you far more features as a unified communications platform and it’s Voice features are suitable for most businesses.

My advice to everyone is this: SIP trunk the systems together.  It is possible through dial plan manipulation to give the Lync phone numbers the same as the desk phones – use access code plus the real number in the PBX to point to Lync, then you can forward the phone (or sim ring) to the Lync station (or the reverse, point everything to Lync and allow sim ring to the desk phone).  Downside -this doesn’t give you the “in a call” presence indication if you are talking on the PBX phone.  Then you can start eliminating legacy desk phones or replacing them with native Lync phones, until your down to the people who absolutely need them - like the last people who had a typewriter in the office.

Come see how Lync can improve communications in your organization and give new tools for interacting with your peers, partners and customers including instant messaging, desktop sharing, voice, video and collaboration all from a single client that is integrated with the rest of the Microsoft Office suite. We’ll demonstrate Lync including communicating with Federated partners and show it’s native integration with other Microsoft products such as SharePoint and Outlook.

Click here to RSVP:

http://events.linkedin.com/DFW-Pro-November-3rd-UG-Meeting-Lync/pub/814521

Update:

Thanks to everyone for coming out.  Here is the slide deck from last night:

 Lync 2010 DFW IT Pro

For those who want to test drive Lync in their lab (or at home), here are a couple of resources.  First, you can download all the software that you need here:

http://bit.ly/mYh96b 

For a good video tutorial of how to install, check out this site:

http://www.trainsignal.com/blog/videos/install-lync-server-2010

Thanks,

Tom

Update – Video of the Presentation is here:

Please join our LinkedIn Group as well to get the latest information and interact with other
members.

This month’s meeting is graciously being sponsored by NETSCOUT.